Former Blue Jay seaman, Shea Hillenbrand, signed a one year deal with the Angels guaranteeing him $6.0 million in 2007. The Angels have a $6.5 million option for 2008. No word on what Hillenbrand will be giving to Juan Rivera.

The Giants were already giving up their 2nd and 3rd round picks so Zito is only costing them a 4th rounder. But they picked up 5 picks in the first & sandwich rounds so they have two more than they normally would and have better picks.

This brings up the obvious question, which would you rather have, given both signed contracts for the same length and same dollars, Vernon Wells or Barry Zito (yes, there are some differences, but close enough for this).

Wells - Entering age 28 season, 112 OPS+ lifetime, 100 or better every season as a regular with 2 seasons at the 125+ level, 590 or more plate appearances for 5 years in a row (all his regular seasons).Zito - Entering age 29 season, 126 ERA+ lifetime, 6 seasons as a regular with 200+ IP, 3 times had an ERA+ of 125+, 116 each of the last 2 years.

So, two very healthy players, both in the heart of their primes (27-32) signed until they are in their mid-30's and past their prime. Appropriately enough the most similar to Zito is Mike Hampton who signed his big deal just before his age 28 season. The only guy better than Zito for ERA+ in his 10 comparables was Appier (136). Just 3 of his 10 comparables had and ERA+ of 100+ for the rest of their career, with just one over 106 (Glavine at 126), just 3 had 50 or more wins left in them as well (74 for Appier, 115 for Lolich, 182+ for Glavine). Glavine is the only active player among them so these figures are fairly set.

Wells? I went through his comparables awhile ago, but the thumbnail is only 1 failed to play 7 more seasons (not counting active guys Beltran and Green). All had OPS+ of 100 or better for the rest of their career, all but 2 had 100+ HR (Beltran & short career Jim Ray Hart), 5 had 1000+ hits (Green will join this group with 9 more hits).

Looking at it I'd say Wells is the better bet to hold value for the 7 years and that SF will regret this signing at some point, probably within 3 - 4 years. Pat Gillick used to say, back when he was part of the Jays, that signing pitchers for more than 2 years was a mistake, with 3 being the most he'd ever want to give and everything I've ever seen screams that as well. FYI, he also felt 3 years was as far as you should go for hitters.

If they each play the next 7 years at the level they've played the last 5 years there is no doubt in my mind that Zito >> Wells. But the odds of either player playing all 7 years at the level of the past 5 years is low, and for Zito the odds of being healthy and effective for all 7 years is very, very low just due to the nature of being a pitcher.

Overall, I'd rather have the Wells contract which I think is most likely to be a slight overpay with only a small chance of being a disaster than the Zito contract which has a much larger chance of being a disaster.

A great contract from Zito's point of view. Great to play in the NL and in SF as your home park.

Nice deal for Zito. For the Giants, I'm not sure why they suddenly
decided to get involved in the free-agent market at this late date, and
why they decided to make a Wells-level commitment in doing so. It's not
like he was the missing piece of the puzzle that will put them over the
top (though that's a pretty nice rotation they're assembling, admittedly). The
Giants weren't on anyone's Zito radar a week ago -- Scott Boras is a
master of creating markets where none existed previously. Hopefully,
this will help safeguard the Jays' first-rounder from Texas.

Looks like the free-agent off-season is done for the most part -- the
interesting thing now will be to see if any trades open up. There was
some talk that the Blue Jays might offer a corner outfielder and a
pitching prospect to the Mets for Aaron Heilman; with the Mets now in
pretty dire need of a starter and perhaps more willing to finally
convert Heilman from the bullpen, that looks less likely.

Jays get the pick assuming that the Rangers don't sign Huff or Clemens right? (or Loretta or Belliard, but since they are 2nd baseman and Texas doesn't need one, chances are slim)

None of those players were offered arbitration by their respective clubs so they won't be costing the signing team a draft pick. As Pistol said, the Zito signing officially gives the Jays the 16th overall pick.

"For the Giants, I'm not sure why they suddenly decided to get involved in the free-agent market at this late date, and why they decided to make a Wells-level commitment in doing so."

Because, like many teams in baseball they are poorly run. This is a team that is very very very old and apart from having a potentially excellent staff (Zito, Cain, Lowry) they really are going to be at best a mediocre team for many years. Instead of taking a couple of years to rebuild, they go and throw money at mediocre veterans like Molina and Aurillia and hope for a fluke season. The Angels signing Hillenbrand seems idiotic to me. He's someone with very little value beyond being a decent bench player. I would much rather take a risk with a combination of Kotchman and Morales (a smart team would swoop to get one of those guys IMO.) Of course, this is the team that insisted on playing Erstad at first base and batting Garrett Anderson cleanup no matter how poor their numbers were. (And signed Garry Matthews to an insane contract). I have rarely seen a team make such a mess of so many top prospects for the sake of mediocre to crappy veterans.

Boy is it a good time to be a baseball player. 2 non-elite players (Zito and Wells) each got 126 million dollar contracts. With salaries going up each season, I wonder how much Johan Santana will get once his contract expires. Perhaps a team will give him a 10 year/300 million dollar contract?

I'm a fan of Zito. It's difficult to find productive starting pitchers that stay healthy season after season. Heck anybody even know when was the last time Zito made a trip to the DL? I'm also happy to see he signed with a club in the NL.

Nice deal for Zito. For the Giants, I'm not sure why they suddenly
decided to get involved in the free-agent market at this late date, and
why they decided to make a Wells-level commitment in doing so.

Maybe they figure that they can always move Zito to the Yankees if they need to dump payroll. It's like having a Mutual of Steinbrenner insurance policy.

You can officially pronounce me satisfied with the Thomas signing - if Hillenbrand is getting $6.5 million a year, The Big Hurt is now, by comparison, The Big Bargoon.

Ron and James W, if Zito's ever been on the DL it was in the minor leagues because he hasn't missed a start since arriving in the big leagues to stay on July 22, 2000. Maybe more pitchers should look into yoga, meditation, flexibility, and avoiding bulking up because it sure seems to work for him, although to be fair he is a different breed.

All things considered, I'd be a lot happier if Zito was a Met right now.

The rumoured talk of a potential Heilman and Milledge for Rios deal had the most appeal to me; assuming of course that J.P. would then flip Milledge and some combination of young pitching to Billy Beane for one of their young pitchers.

Hypothetically, if a deal like that was being discussed, it's a lot more likely now that Omar approaches Beane directly with a Heilman + Milledge package. With Omar missing out on Zito, it could potentially take away two of the trading partners that seem to make the most sense in terms of aquiring a good young pitcher to fill the three hole.

The names listed are the ones I suspect he used for the Jays (he doesn't list who he used, but does say how he picked them so it is easy to guess).

So, above average across the board except for #5 (thanks to Towers, McGowan, and Rosario - 16 starts, 12 by Towers). Right now the Jays do not have a #3 but do have 5 guys who could be a #4 (Chacin, Marcum, Janssen, Downs, Taubenheim). If those guys could pitch like last year then a #3 who allows 1/2 a run more per game and a #5 who allows 1 1/2 less per game would work out nicely overall. Is that reasonable, to assume those 3 of those 5 (really 4 as Downs is almost a lock for the pen outside of emergency starts) will start 32 games each at a 5.00 ERA level? Not really. Plus we'd be assuming AJ and Halladay stay healthy.

So, potentially we have a solid 5 man in Halladay/AJ/Chacin/Taubenheim/Marcum with Janssen as the #6 and Downs in the emergency slot but a real #3 (4-4.5 ERA) who might be a #2 whenever/if AJ or Halladay go down would be a big asset. Lets hope one of Chacin/Taubenheim/Marcum/McGowan/Rosario develops next year.

Actually, I think the Giants are doing a good job this offseason in the face of a major loss of free agents. They play in a weak division, in a weak league, so they don't need to be great to make the post season. With a rotation featuring Zito, Cain, Lowry, Morris, a batting order of Roberts, Vizquel, Durham, Bonds, Winn, Feliz, Aurilia/Klesko, and Molina/Alfonzo, and a bullpen with Benitez, Worrell, Kline, Correia, Chulk and Hennessey they look like a pretty solid team. Although they are a veteran team, they aren't ancient - the only players over 35 are Bonds, Vizquel, Durham, Sweeney and Worrell, and first 3 of those guys are still very good players. It took 88 wins to take the NL West last year, and I think the Giants have a shot at being in that range. If you get to the post season, and have that kind of starting rotation, who knows.....

That rotation article from hardball times is interesting. It means the average AL starter's ERA is 4.77. And the average AL pitcher overall had an ERA of 4.56. The Jays overall had a team ERA of 4.37, good enough for 5th overall even with terrible pitching from Towers and time missed by Chacin and AJ. The Jays starter's ERA was 4.66 according to the hardball article, 0.11 better than average.

Looking at the split stats on ESPN we can see if this is accurate. According to the split stats the Jays got the 7th best ERA in the AL with a 4.6 ERA from their starters. The average ERA (not-weighted by innings) was 4.75. An interesting tidbit from looking at the splits is the Jays only got 899.1 IP from their guys as starters, third lowest IP by starters with only Texas (5.11 ERA) and Kansas City (5.85 ERA) worse. The average team got around 945 IP from their starters so the Jays got about an out less per game from their starting pitchers.

Looking at the split stats on ESPN we can see that the Jays had the 6th best bullpen by ERA with a 3.98 ERA when pitching as a reliever. The Jays, unsurprisingly, had the third most innings in relief at 529. The average (unweighted) ERA by relievers in the AL was 4.21. The average team got just shy of 493 IP from relief.

So based on qualities here one can tell that pitching was a strength for the Jays last year with the starters being slightly better than average in quality while being worse than average in quantity and the relievers were substantially better than average in both quality and quantity.

If you remove Ted Lilly's work the Jays starters would have an ERA of 4.67 (still above average) but would have just under 717 IP.

I think I would have rather handed the Wells money to Zito all things considered...we could have kept Wells for this year and if we pushed for the playoffs it coulda given us more money to sign Wells. If it fails, we trade Wells, Thomas and others at the deadline to pick up some MUCH needed prospects...oh well here's part of the stat breakdown I did:

Zito has spent 7 seasons in Major League Baseball, winning 102 games and losing 63 (.618 winning percentage).

He's consistently thrown over 200 innings for the last 6 seasons.

His
best season was in 2002 when he won 23 games, lost 5 and had an ERA of
2.75 along with an ERA+ of 169, he was rewarded with the Cy Young Award
that season and won his only playoff start that season.

He's 7-7 in the playoffs with an ERA of 3.25, those stats are swayed by his awful start against Detroit last season

He threw over 220 innings in the last two seasons and had an ERA+ of 116 both seasons

Next off-season is the one with all the centre field FAs so I don't know if Wells would be unreplacable plus the Jays have an in house option or two in Rios and Johnson. We have no real options for a number two/three starter (wherever u rank Burnett/Zito in those two slots). Of course, this could all be for not because maybe Zito just didn't want to leave the West Coast...At the very least the innings above average that Zito could give the Jays instead of having Towers/Marcum/Janssen/Taubenheim/Mcgowan as one of our starters would have been great...not like the Jays couldn't pick up a corner outfielder next off-season to allow Rios or Johnson to shift to center.

"Boston is not the best at any of the rotation slots, in fact is #3 out of 3 in all cases.'

This is hardly fair. Boston has Matsuzuka whose ERA does not exist there but by all accounts has incredible potential. Lester shows a lot of promise (and is healthy) and Pappelbon is going to try starting. I don't think you'd find anyone outside of Toronto (and most people in it) who think the Jays' rotation is nearly as good as Boston's. Schilling, Matsuzuka, Beckett, Wakefield, Lester, and Papelbon is a very good rotation+1 and at this point way ahead of Halladay, Burnett, Chacin, Marcum, Towers.

My pitching guru (ie my dad or Papa Cornfax as he was known to some of the chat regulars) pointed something out to me. I asked him if he would sign any pitcher for 7 years and he said no. And I said that Zito had never spent anytime on the DL and he pointed out that no time on the DL isn't always a good thing for the future of a pitcher. If a pitcher never had any time off during a season to rest the arm, that means he has logged a significant number of innings on that arm. More innings means the likelyhood of arm stress and fatigue will increase, especially as a pitcher gets older, leading to a blow up.

Schilling, Matsuzuka, Beckett, Wakefield, Lester, and Papelbon is a very good rotation+1

Except that three of them have never started in MLB, one of them is a 50-50 proposition as a knuckleballer, one is 42 and hasn't done anything lately and the other gave up 1.7 homers per game and got rocked time and again by the Blue Jays. I'm not quaking in my boots, I doubt the Jays are either.

I'll wait until Matsuzuka, Lester and Papelbon throw a pitch as a starter before I hand them Cy Youngs.

If Papelbon was so great as a starter in limited 2005 appearances, why would the BoSox be wasting him in the bullpen in 2006? I know they had a strong rotation going into the season but with the ineffective Matt Clement and Kyle Snyder starting games, why wouldn't they have moved Papelbon to the rotation? Was it a case of "young guy we don't want to jerk around too much" or "doing well in another role that isn't easy to fill so let's not mess with succss and hope the rotation can sort itself out"?

Papelbon has good starting numbers in a VERY small sample size. In my opinion, assuming that he is definitely going to be successful as a starter seems to be jumping the gun as much as with Matsuzaka, or when thinking that Aaron Heilman is a potential Cy Young starter just waiting to be moved to an organization that'l actually put him in the rotation. If it's such a great idea, why wasn't it done already? You'd think the Mets would've given him a chance to start instead of trotting out guys like Alan Soler or Olivier Perez to fill in when the regular starters were hurt.

If you look at baseball's $100 million men, it seems that most teams have regretted the signings.

Look:

A-ROD (10 years, $252 Million) While he has played extremely well
(during the regular season), Texas obviously felt like they
overpaid (since they traded him to NY and are still paying about $9
million/year)

JETER (10 years, $189 Million). Steinbrenner has stopped
complaining about Jeter's partying, so I guess we can consider
Steinbrenner content with this one.

MANNY (8 Years, $160 Million) How do you evaluate this one?
Manny wants to be traded every year. The Red Sox even put him on
waivers a few years ago, and noone wanted him. Still, even with
an 80 or 90% effort, he is one of the best hitters in baseball.
Obviously the Red Sox with they hadn't made the deal, but at least they
got good value for it.

TODD HELTON (9 years, $145 Million) Helton has certainly declined in
recent years (with OPS of over 1.000 every year from 2000-2004, to just
.880 in 2006). Colorado would love to get out of this contract if
they could.

MIKE HAMPTON: (8 years, $121 Million) His contract runs through
2008. This one pretty much destroyed the Rockies for a decade.

JASON GIAMBI (7 Years, $120 Million): He has turned things around, but
just 2 years ago, the Yankees wanted to send him to the minors, and
were even consulting with their lawyers to see if they could void the
contract because, "They were shocked that he was using steroide".
So, we can put this one in the column of "teams that regretted signing
the contract".

BELTRAN (7 Years, $119 Million) If you asked what the Mets
thought after the 2005 season, tney surely would have had a different
answer than they do now. The jury is still out on this one.

GRIFFEY JR (9 Years, $116.5 Million) This was supposedly a
"hometeam discount". The Reds surely haven't gotten their money's
worth on this contract.

KEVIN BROWN (7 years, $105 Million) Injuries, injuries, injuries

ALBERT PUJOLS (7 Years: $100 Million) The best signing of the group.

NEW CONTRACTS:
SORIANO: 8 Years, 136 Million
ZITO: 7 Years, $126 Million
WELLS: 7 Years, $126 Million
CARLOS LEE: 6 years, $100 Million

Summing up:
PUJOLS and JETER are the best contracts (in the eyes of their teams' owners).
MANNY and A-ROD, while overpaid in the eyes of their original teams, have performed extremely well.

The rest of the teams have really regretted their signings to varying
degrees (HELTON, HAMPTON, GIAMBI, BROWN,), while the jury is still out
on Beltran.

So, I'd say that Carlos Lee and Soriano are the most likely to look like really bad signings in 5 years.

Another thing to consider about the $100M contracts are the players' ages at the start of the contract. Whereas most long-term contracts are signed by free agents after their theoretical peak years (ages 27/28), some are signed with the theoretical peak years still to come (Pujols and Jeter, who were not FA's, and Rodriguez, who was a young FA).

It seems that any team signing a 30-year old to a 7+-year contract is just asking for trouble. That should seem intuitive on its face, but even the limited history bears that out. Wouldn't mulligans surely be taken on Griffey, Giambi, and Brown? What does this bode for this year's thirtysomethings: Soriano, Lee, Drew, and Matthews? Come 2009 will the pathetic plea of "do over" be bellowed by many a GM?

The list below shows each of the $100M-players' ages in the first year of their contracts as well as some of the sub-$100M 5-year contracts handed out this off-season.

Pujols: age 24 season (7 years) (treating his published age as the truth)Rodriguez: age 25/26 season (10 years)Jeter: age 27 season (10 years)Helton: age 27/28 season (9 years)Beltran: age 28 season (7 years)Ramirez: age 29 season (8 years)Wells: age 29 season (7 years)Pierre: age 29/30 (5 years)Griffey: age 30 season (9 years)Lee: age 30/31 season (6 years)Giambi: age 31 season (7 years)Soriano: age 31 season (8 years)Drew: age 31 season (5 years)Matthews: age 32/33 season (5 years)

Hampton: age 28 season (8 years)Zito: age 29 season (7 years)Brown: age 34 season (7 years)

I'm catching up on my ESPN Podcasts and I listened to one featuring Keith Law. On the topic of the Giants signing Zito, Law said Zito is a number 3 or 4 starter. Law must be smoking some illegal stuff to even entertain the thought Zito is a number 4 starter. When JP called him an idiot, maybe he wasn't really joking. And then he went on to say he wasn't worth 18 million a season. It seems like every so called expert thinks almost all FA signings are overpaid. These writers/insiders simply don't understand the marketplace. They can't accept the fact MLB is swimming in cash and the players are getting their slice of the pie.

These writers/insiders simply don't understand the marketplace. They can't accept the fact MLB is swimming in cash and the players are getting their slice of the pie.

I don't believe that objecting to the Zito contract and believing that the players deserve their fair share of the ever growing pie are mutually exclusive. Zito has his virtues, to be sure, but an objective look at his peripherals suggests that he may not be the pitcher his reputation suggests. And a contract of that duration for a pitcher, even one with Zito's flawless health record, is a definite gamble.

Law can certainly be accused of hyperbole, but if Zito's ERA catches up to his peripherals, it's not inconceivable that he'd be no better than a mid-rotation starter (albeit a healthy one good for 210 innings). It's certainly not clear that the Giants are any better a team with Zito replacing Schmidt.

"If Papelbon was so great as a starter in limited 2005 appearances, why would the BoSox be wasting him in the bullpen in 2006? I know they had a strong rotation going into the season but with the ineffective Matt Clement and Kyle Snyder starting games, why wouldn't they have moved Papelbon to the rotation?"

I think you can hardly call a 0.92 ERA and a 0.78 WHIP as the closer a waste. I never said that he was going to be successful. I don't know about him or Matsuzuka, but they have a lot of upside which is something the Jays starters 3-5 don't have.

There are two ways of looking at this statement, both of which seem rediculous to me.

Giving Law the benefit of the doubt:

Who are the 75 starting pitchers in baseball you'd rather have next year? (30 teams, top 60 starters are all the 1 and 2's and 74 takes you to mid way through the 3's).

Giving Law not the benfit of the doubt:

Do you expect there to be starting pitchers who make 2700 games started that are better than Zito (30 teams, *30 starts per slot *3 slots since a "3 or 4" would be, on average, worse than all the 3s but better than all the 4s). The worst at each slot this way is:

Note that each of these are somewhat optimistic as I'm counting everyone's ERA overall even if they got it from more IP as a reliever than a starter as ESPN sortable pitching stats is down and yahoo doesn't have splits. Also, I only made each slot have 30 starts per team so the truely worst ~350 starts aren't listed in any of these. Do you really expect Zito to have a 4.8+ ERA?

I think you can hardly call a 0.92 ERA and a 0.78 WHIP as the closer a waste.

I was speaking relatively. I know he was an extremely effective closer last season, but you'd have to admit if he put up numbers anywhere near that impressive as a starter his value would be much, much higher. By "wasted" I meant that if he's actually that good as a starter, he'd contribute a lot more in the rotation.

You do all remember when Law said that Vernon Wells had informed the Blue Jays head office he had no intention of re-signing with the Jays, because he wanted to play in Texas and because the Jays were "too white" and we all know how true that was.

With that comment, the "Morneau as MVP is a joke" post and now the "Zito is a 3rd or 4th starter", Law might be trying to set himself up as a hard hitting malcontent. And a bit of an a-hole. And if Zito was the "3rd or 4th" starter on the Jays, I would be so happy.

I do advocate giving the MVP Award to the league's best player (not Morneau), but in light of every team's ultimate regular season goal (to make the playoffs), you can argue that no other player meant as much to their team's chances of making the playoff as Morneau did to the Twins.

Jeter was great but he didn't need to be great, and there weren't any standouts among the Tigers, so if we're keeping in mind the goal of every team in Spring Training, I think an MVP race between Morneau, Thomas, and Jeter with Justin winning, seems a little more justifiable.

For a first baseman, those numbers are good, but not great. Certainly not MVP calibre. He was basically the same as Paul Konerko.

and your team getting hot when you get hot and then winning the division = not a joke.

Ugh. I hate, hate, hate this stuff. Think about what you're saying. You are indirectly implying that if Morneau had been hot the whole season, he wouldn't be MVP. That is ridiculous. If Morneau had been hot all season long, and the Twins had won the division by a bunch of games, Morneau wouldn't have been MVP. You're giving him bonus points for sucking at the start of the season. That's ridiculous. The Twins turned it around because of a number of factors. They dumped Tony Batista and Juan Castro and finally let Jason Bartlett play. They moved Liriano to the rotation, where he excelled, and Justin Morneau caught fire. The Twins were an excellent team with the top pitcher in the game, and the real MVP, Joe Mauer.

People like to vote for Morneau because his impact is "visible." They like it when a player sucks and then suddenly starts to play well and the team does something, or when a player is traded and the team does well. That way the voter can look at the team's play "before and after" and make a lazy decision. We've seen this before with the Vladimir Guerrero MVP, and in the other sports as well. But of course it makes no sense to say that a player who sucks and then turns it on is more valuable than a player who is awesome all year (like Jeter.) Again, voters don't care about who is actually more valuable in this case, they only care about whose value is more visible.

It disappoints me that Morneau was even considered a contender for the award. You can't tell me that you would rather have him on your team than Joe Mauer or Johan Santana. Hell, I might even take Joe Nathan before I take the first baseman with 30 homers. Advocating Morneau for MVP does two things: It rewards a player for being sub-par at the start of the season, and it completely ignores the value of defense (what else is new.) Simply put, a SS like Jeter, or a C like Mauer, or even a CF like Wells/Sizemore are all more valuable than a 1B like Morneau. Yet, Morneau wins the award because he hit .208 in April.

The list from 1-18 is about right, assuming you are talking about single season only (the only thing way wrong is Wang is way worse than you have him IMHO). But the problem with listing them that way is there is a bigger gap from 1 to 6 than from 7 to 12.

The Jays pitching was a strength last year and losing Lilly will hurt. The Red Sox pitching was a weakness and gaining Kmaz and Pap into the rotation will help them.

But, there isn't really anything in the FA market that will make a huge difference (I.e., nothing worth over spending to get). I agree that if Okha or whoever would take a cheap contract or a short 1 or 2 year deal it might be worth adding the depth.

If you could trade for true studs that would work too, but I doubt even Rios could fetch real studs as I think pitching is too highly valued right now so I think the Jays should make do with their plethora of "OK" guys.